Archive for the ‘Cosmetics’ Category:
Ok, so I thought that I couldn’t possibly love any mascara more than I love my treasured, used for years, L’Oreal Lash Out Mascara. Now I think I’ve found one that actually beats that one. It’s actually by L’Oreal as well, which makes me think they have probably the best drugstore brand mascaras on the market – at least they are the best I’ve ever tried.
I bought the Voluminous mascara by L’Oreal about two weeks ago, figuring I’d give it a try since I’d been using Lash Out for so many weeks now. I also happened to have a coupon for $1.00 off any L’Oreal eye product, so that was a bonus, and I figured if I didn’t like it well then I’d spent a buck less on it and wouldn’t be as mad.
I bought the mascara in the #380 version, called “Blackest Black” or Noir Profond in French – remember, they are a French company 
The mascara advertises as being able to build lash volume, lash by lash, for a defining effect. It showed a picture of the soft brush on the packaging, and that sold me too because I only like the wands that are very fine and separated. The wands actually make a lot of the difference in how the mascara is applied, how well it separates the lashes, and how well it makes the mascara itself adhere to each individual lash.
It’s been my experience that only these fine, many-bristled soft applicators really get the job done best. So when I saw that, and knowing that it was by L’Oreal, who makes several of my other lower cost eye makeup products, I was sold. It cost about $6 with the coupon, which wasn’t bad at all.
So, I threw away my old, dried up Lash Out which had gotten goopy on me because I’d gone longer than the 2 months to get rid of it and replace it, and applied this mascara for the first time before going to work.
WOW, it really is excellent. It is a great formula first of all, not too thick, so it doesn’t clump easily, but also it’s not too thin to where you feel like you have to apply five coats to even see a difference in the thickness of your lashes. It separates, defines and lengthens all at the same time, and in record time too, with minimal reapplication. I’m sold, and I’ll be buying this stuff again. It wore well too, all day long without smudging or running or flaking.
One of my favorite aquired tricks when I apply my foundation in the morning is to wet the foundation sponge a little bit with cold water. It seems like something you wouldn’t want to do, after all, why would you want to keep wetting something that you store every day, possibly encouraging mildew growth? Well, I make sure that I dry it out by squeezing it in the dry hand towel that sits right by my medicine cabinet after I’m done using it.
This just helps to ensure that you won’t get mildew growth on the sponge if you decide you really like this makeup application technique. Of course, you also want to regularly wash your sponges as well, I like to hand wash them with some soap and let them air dry, this also help discourage bacteria and mold growth, and ensure that you are rubbing a safe sponge on your face every day.
So, what does wetting your foundation sponge do for you? Well, it makes you foundation look much more sheer, instead of cakey, and it tends to give a more natural, dewy look to your skin. Why? Because 1.) It helps to ensure that you are not putting too much foundation on your face by diluting it. The water soaks up the sponge a bit, so the sponge is not as porous and cannot over-absorb the foundation, so you end up with less spackle on your face and 2.) The water dilutes the foundation and imparts a more natural, sheer look instead of the opaque or matte look that is really out today. Today, makeup is all about sheer, natural, dewy and fresh looking, not procelain and matted looking, which was in back in the eighties and nineties.
If you use this technique for applying your foundation with a sponge, then you really are going to make it look the most sheer, natural and becoming color and tone that you can. I tend to like foundations that are anti aging and anti wrinkle in nature, and they can tend to look a bit heavy if they are not diluted. Not only that, your face won’t feel bogged down by too much foundation, and you will find that it blends much more readily, reducing the likelihood of the splotched or smeared look if it dries too quickly and doesn’t go on evenly.
I’ve seen this on my own face when I forgot to use the water, and it’s hard to re-blend it correctly so it looks natural again. The water is a great, cheap way to get your foundation on, looking the best it can.
Well, I figured I’d go “old school” and try Clinique makeup again when I was looking for a purple hued quad that I could use to create a lighter, more airy look so I figured I’d go to the departments stores and look at the various brands. I only really picked Clinique because they had all the right colors I was looking for in one quad. It had a shimmery dark grey, a light pinkish purple for the base and lid, a slightly darker purple shade for the lid and shadow area, and then a dark purple for the crease, which was exactly what I needed.
I was struck by how badly their station was set up for users to try on their products though. They only had qtips and some sort of cotton thing that put the makeup on really powdery, so you couldn’t really tell how the finished look would appear. However, in a panic, I bought it. It costs over thirty bucks too, so I figured I’d try it out with my “real” makeup brushes when I got home and see if I liked it.
While I liked the colors themselves, they simply were not vibrant or rich enough, and I felt like the eyeshadow itself was too powdery and loose, and needed to be a bit creamier or more compact to achieve the look I was going for. I think Clinique would benefit greatly by simply improving the richness of their colors and the consistency, then they could compete with some of the newer breed of high end makeup that is coming up with the richer colors more effectively.
Overall, I would say I would have liked the product and kept it if it had a better consistency as well as better color saturation, however, in the end, although the colors looked great in the palette, they just didn’t transfer on to my skin richly enough for what I wanted.
My upcoming wedding has got me spending a lot of money on beauty stuff, and fun stuff like hair care products, this is how I found my favorite new curl enhancing spray from Victoria’s Secret, for example, and I’ve also bought TONS of new makeup as well. I bought a new, more tawny shade of Revlon Color Stay foundation, tons of new eyeshadows, which I’m sorry to say the majority of them are just so-so, and new mascara, new eyeliner, and so on and so forth.
My favorite new purchase, and my favorite experience, was my purchase of some fun new MAC eye stuff. I asked the MAC consultant at the counter (I was shocked to see we just got a new MAC counter at Macy’s) to give me a good new look with some purple/lilac pretty feminine eye shades. She sat me down and took off the makeup that I already had on with a makeup remover. She took a quad palette of purples, blues and greys, and her bevy of makeup brushes, and went to town on my eyes.
She taught me some new techniques I never knew to do before, like tilting my head back to do the shade on my crease and the highlighting shade on the outside corners of my eyes, and she introduced me to the awesome paint pot of eyeshadow primer, which I ended up buying, and the virtues of a flat brush for applying eyeshadow, which I also bought.
The eyeshadow foundation and the brush are probably my favorite purchase, as they help to create an awesome, rich, precision look that you can’t really get without the right tools and the right makeup. The eyshadow is great too, but that is something I have already experienced and used, so it was nothing new.
The foundation for the eye makeup is a stiffer, flesh colored makeup in a small round pot that you pat onto the eyes with the flat bursh. When it dries all the way, you put your shadows on. Your crease shadown, base shade, and the corner shade colors and so on and so forth. They all go on much richer looking and they also stay on your eyes ALL DAY LONG. This stuff is totally worth the $16.50 investment, you have to trust me.
The brush I think ran about $25 and the eyeshadow quad ran me about $36. All in all, I learned some great techniques and got great makeup, so I’m happy as a clam. Another cool trick is to use a makeup sponge to clean off your brush between color applications, by patting it onto the sponge and getting the color off in preparation for you next color.
You may have seen various makeup artists using white eyeliner when applying the eye makeup to clients before, and wondered, as I did, what that actually does as far as optical illusions for the eyes. After all, that’s what makeup is – it’s all an optical illusion. We put foundation and contour blushes on to our skin to make our skin looke warmer, more even and more radiant.
We apply eyeshadows in certain patters to add depth to our eyes, and capture their natural brilliance. We apply mascara to lengthen our lashes and bring more depth and magnetism to our eyes and boost our sex appeal even higher. We add lipstick and lipstains and glosses to our mouths to make them look fuller and more pouty – again, making us look sexier and more alluring.
You see the point I’m making here. Makeup is all an illusion. It plays up our best assets and downplays our not so great features, and it’s also sort of the ornament we wear every day, like jewlry for the face. It’s fun to play with colors and tones, to see what kind of illusion you can create, and how different you can make your face look simply by using different makeup techniques.
White eyeliner may not look all that impressive in it’s little stick, but it is definitely a powerful tool to have in your cosmetics arsenal. White eyeliner is great when applied to the bottom lid, rimming the inner lid, to make the eyes look bigger and brighgter. In fact, as an experiment, I was in Kohl’s the other day on my lunch, already fully made up with a good day of eye makeup on, and I rimmed the bottom lash line with a very bright white, intense cream eyeliner, and it really made my eyes pop, and look much brighter.
It seemed to make the other colors look much more vivid that I had already applied to my lids, which happened to be an earthy plum/brown palette. White liner is also favored by some to put little dots on the upper lid as well to brighten the effect even more. I purchase my white eyeliner at CVS, in the brand Revlon, for about nine bucks, but you can probably find it cheaper by Maybelline for maybe five or six bucks.
I like the Revlon brand because it comes off the pencil and onto your eye easily and wears long, plus it’s really really bright white, which is what you need when you’re going for the eye popping effect we’re talking about.
Let me just say first that I think the two best drugstore brands of makeup are Revlon and L’Oreal, hands down. I’ve sung the praises of L’Oreal’s Lash Out black mascara now for years, and have been a faithful customer since it’s the only mascara that makes my lashes look uver long without looking like tarantulas.
And I’ve used their foundations, powders, HIP eyeshadow colors (which I really like), and all kinds of their lipsticks, glosses, you name it. With Revlon, I’ve mostly been a fan of their Color Stay line, namely the foundation, since it’s been compared to the durability and color coverage of a higher end MAC or other higher end foundation.
I’ve never actually had much luck with their eyeshadows though, until they came out with what looks like a new wave of colors. I’m not sure if they reformulated their Color Stay eyeshadow, which is reasonably priced between 6.50 and 8.00 depending on where you shop, for a quad of rich colors, but this time their colors are very rich and deeply penetrating. They give warmth, depth and dimension to your eyes, and they do indeed wear for a long time, like they say. I like the fact that it doesn’t look like I’m wearing cheap makeup when I wear them because the colors are so deep and rich also.
This time, I purchased the Color Stay eyeshadow quads in a purple quad, with earthy purplish brown colors and pinkish hues for your highlight colors on the brow bone and lid, and also a brown, earthy quad, which rich bronzes and browns for those days when I feel like being my boring old, brown self, but only with a little more pizaaz since they add that extra drama I was looking for.
They sweep on easily with a brush, and they go on dark and vibrant, so you don’t feel like you need to dip your brush in a million times to get the intensity you want. Heck, let’s face it, half the time you can’t even get the intensity and coverage you want when you do dip a million times. With these colors though, I’m very happy. I feel like I got a high end brand for pennies on the dollar, and who could argue with that logic!?
When it comes to your skin, and the products you apply to it, it’s important to remember one simple idea. Your skin is the gateway to the rest of your body, and although people don’t often think of it this way, whatever you put on your skin is absorbed “transdermally” into the blood stream. This is how things like nicotine patches and transdermally applied estrogen creams and other externally applied medicines and remedies work, they are absorbed, albeit many times at a slower rate, but nonetheless absorbed, into the body via the skin instead of orally.
With that thought in mind, now think of how many skin care products you use. I know for me, that count is around ten per day. I use two different day time moisturizers in the morning, the first layer is my sunscreen lotion and the second is my brightening day cream. I then layer on foundation and my Revlon skinlights skin illuminator. We’re already at four. Add to that, my allover application of body lotion to prevent dryness at night, and then the two different creams I use at night, and you’ve got seven. Ok, not quite ten, but when you also add in the skin care treatments I use to prevent age spots and wrinkles, then I know I’m at least at the ten mark.
You get the point. There are a lot of opportunities for you skin to be exposed to the wrong types of ingredients. So it’s important that if you are health conscious, to be picking ingredients that are the least offensive and troublesome when it comes to causing problems within your body, and on your skin itself. Now, down to the nitty gritty. What are the ingredients you should really try to avoid when shopping for your skin care products, and if you really want to get technical, your other body care and hygiene products if you possibly can?
I’ll admit, I still buy typical store brands of things like body lotions and toothpaste and soap, but if you really want to get down to all products, we should all probably be shopping in the organic/natural (and of course more expensive) sections when we are looking for anything we apply to our body, hair or mouth.
Without further ado, here’s the list of undesirable ingredients to avoid if you can:
Parabens
Acrylamide
Petrolatum and petroleum based ingredients as this is a thick coating and often clogs pores. Mineral oil is included in this group by the way, and I’ve had lots of bad experiences with anything mineral oil based breaking my skin out.
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Propylene Glycol
I’m really liking Avon products lately. They’re cheap, some of them work really well (admittedly others are what you pay for), and they have a great assortment of colors, flavors, you name it. Plus they’re now avaiable for you to buy online, which is another bonus. I remember the days when I had to go through an Avon rep to buy my makeup. I loved Avon back then. As a teen with little money to spare and a huge need to try all the latest cosmetics, Avon products were the best of both worlds for me. They were inexpensive and they also offered a lot of the latest colors that were in style, but they also worked pretty well.
I have tried a few that I just plain didn’t like. I actually just tried a sample that I got along with my last order when I ordered my Beyond Color Plumping lip balm and lipstick and my True Color Eyeshadow quads that I couldnt’ stand. I have it on still as we speak and cannot wait to get home and wash it off since it’s stigling my skin and was way too thick for my already oily skin type. This was cream that was a day and night moisturizing agent that advertised as being extremely moisturizing. Never a good thing for those that break out easily.
The only good thing about it was that it had an SPF 15 in it, but it was extremely heavy and greasy, and went on an opaque white. Wouldnt’ recommend that and I’m glad it was just a sample! At any rate, onto the real review here, which is my True Color eyeshadow quad and my Beyond Color lip plumping lip color and lip balm, which I bought in both a nude plumping color (plain( and a nude but deeper color to try it out. It has “double retinol” which supposedly helps to make the lips look plumper. Not a great plumper, but an excellent primer I must say. And a great nude, light color to wear on it’s own. Only $4 a pop too, not bad.
The eyeshadow quads are awesome though. I got four of them, one a smoky eyes set, one a browns set, and one an island paradise set which had some turqouise, tan and brownish colors and a bright white. They are all great. The color lasts, and goes on super bright and saturated.
You’d think you spent a lot more than the mere $6 it cost for this stuff. It’s a really pearlized texture, but they don’t go on pearly, more matte I’d say. They do last well, and when applied with an expert brush, they look great. Of course, they come with the typical cheapo sponge, but if you use that you’ll get a poor result.
I was curious to see if eyelash growth gels and mascaras really worked, so of course I ordered one online to find out. I ordered one of the least expensive brands, because honestly it seemed like they all had mixed reviews, even the pricier brands, so I figured I’d try out a cheap one just to see how it works. I’ve only been using it for about four days, so the jury’s out on whether it works, but it’s the Ardell (yes, the brand you see in stores that makes fake eyelashes and glue and stuff) brow and lash growth accelerator. It comes in a mascara tube with a wand just like mascara is applied.
It is a clear gels that contains proteins that supposedly boost the growth and health of the eyelashes and the eyebrows. I definitely need a little help in the eyebrow department also, as there are several areas that are very sparse thanks to me overplucking them in the nineties and early 2000’s because of the ultra thin brow look that was in back then. Now, more lush, yet shaped eyebrows are all the rage, and I also noticed that I didn’t even look good with pencil thin eyebrows, plus it’s harder to grow them as you get older, so I’m trying to grow in some of the “bald” spots quickly.
I have pretty thick eyelashes to begin with, but a woman can never have too long or too thick eyelashes, right? I figured, no harm no foul, so I purchased a 3 pack of the Ardell Eyelash and Eyebrow growth product to check it out. I’ve been using it now for 4 days, doubling it up, using it in the morning and at night, to see if maybe that might give me a bit of a jump start on my eyelash and eyebrow growth.
I will tell you that although I cannot tell if it’s resulted in any “growth” yet, I notice that my mascara seems to glide onto and grip better to my lashes, almost like I put a primer of some sort on them, so with mascara they look thicker, which makes me wonder if this formula isn’t some kind of binding material that binds to the lashes and makes them appear larger especially once mascara is applied.
As for my eyebrows, of course that’s too early to tell, and I suspect I may be waiting a month or so more before I notice any real results or actual growth on either my brows or my lashes, but I’m a very patient and diligent person when it comes to beauty experiments, so hold tight and I’ll have an update for you in about another month. I do like how it works as sort of a primer for my lashes, I can tell you that. You do have to wait for it to dry completely before applying your mascara. And my one complaint is that the applicator doesn’t bend enough to make you feel like you’re getting it on your eyebrows really well.
Target is a great store to shop for beauty and cosmetic products that are reasonable and have a good reputation as actually working well and being of a high quality for the price you pay. They have the Sonia Kashuk line, which offers almost a full array of cosmetic brushes, including a foundation brush and other blending and blush brushes, and eye contouring brushes, as well as the Eco Tools line, which gets great reviews for being a high quality and working well, and rivaling even the expensive brushes like Sephora and Mac makeup brushes (of course those may still be better, but the Eco Tools gets consistently high marks for it’s quality and durability).
I actually purchased my foundation brush from Target, and I’m pretty happy with it so far. I bought a cheaper brand though, one that’s called Studio Tools, and I’m pretty pleased with it, although I do notice that it is probably built a little more cheaply than the other higher end brands that Target sells, like the Sonia Kashuk, and I might “upgrade” to that one or one of the Mac ones when I have a little more money to see how big a difference it makes in the actual quality of my application of foundation.
So far, I’ve loved using a brush instead of a sponge, which I’ve been using in my makeup application now for years. It takes a little practice at first, and you’re not sure if you’re applying too much because you get so used to the sponge regulating the amount of actual foundation you apply, but overall I think I’m getting better coverage with a foundation brush, and think I will continue to use it to apply my foundation. I also like the concealer brush I bought by them, although I’m trying to decide between concealers now.
I’m torn between the Laura Mercier Camouflage, the BeneFit Boing concealer (supposedly and “industrial strength” concealer, and only $18 as compared to Laura Mercier which runs $25 or so, and another one called Becca, which has gotten good reviews and props for having the largest color selection so you can really match your skin tone well. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m totally open to them since I just want one that really covers up redness well and truly lasts all day long.
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